


Save our Souls

by weheartscorose



Series: Wrong Side of Riverdale [3]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Heavy Angst, Romance, Shameless Smut, Slow Burn, Smut, Unhealthy Relationships, slightly unhealthy yeah?, wow thats so sad lol
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 14:47:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14834310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weheartscorose/pseuds/weheartscorose
Summary: Jughead can't even breathe. The taste in the back of his throat is all her. He falls to his knees, he buries his face in denim covered thighs and Veronica runs her fingers through his hair. "Sometimes I can't even live without you, Princess," he tells her. "Do you know what you do to me?"She's silent, but he knows it's her answer. He knows that she knows exactly what she does to him. "Get off your knees, Jughead," she replies.He shakes his head, closing his eyes. Keeping so close to her just so he can feel grounded. But he's so fucking high in the sky right now, he can feel her blood in his veins. Her being in his body.Her soul and his together."We're dark, baby," he tells her, wrapping his hands around the backs of her thighs, keeping her as close as possible. "Tell me you can't be without me too..." he begs her.Veronica pulls back Jughead to look up at her, her fingers tightening their grip on his hair. "If I could be without you, Jughead, do you think I would be here?"He smiles against her, his heart crushing it's way out of his body. "I have love for you."She smiles strongly. "We only have each other to save our souls."





	Save our Souls

**Author's Note:**

> A Jeronica slowburn. Hoping this may end up more than just this one chapter, I have so many ideas in my mind. Let's see what happens. True to me this is about 127% angst. Possibly (probably) a little darker than my previous Jeronica fic.

**_Chapter One_ **

_Forget_

* * *

 

It’s the tightening of his jaw and the dry, jagged feeling of his teeth grinding together that bring him back down from the cloud-of-smoke haze he had been living in. His eyes that had been weighing so heavy seem to shoot open and he can almost feel his pupils dilating; as if clicking into place. As if he could hear the changes. He reminds himself that he’s acutely aware of everything these days, noises are more static, lights are more glaring. Everything is just a little _more_ now that _she’s_ not here.  

He lays flat on his back, watching dust form in sun streaks through the curtains. Jughead rubs his eyes that seem to have no feeling and he is certain his soul has no feeling as he thinks in short, sharp memories. Sugary blonde. Vanilla kisses.

Soft touches, smiles on lips.

 _Betty_.

He punches the bed, he screws his fists, it drives itself onto the bed without any reaction. It’s better this way. Often, his walls can’t take it.

He groans out loud and mentally swears at the stained ceiling.

“I hate you,” he whispers to the void.

 _“I love you,”_ he says in his mind.

Jughead picks up his phone and looks at it with one eye shut, the light from the screen tearing his other retina apart. Two messages from Sweet Pea, some shit about getting his ass back to the Whyte Wyrm before he kills him. Another from Toni, something about missing Jughead and needing to get burgers. None from Betty.

_None from Betty._

Jughead laughs humorlessly, wondering what the hell would make him think Betty would message him anyway.

“Seven months,” he says as he throws the thin blanket off his body, the same one that he hasn’t even bothered to put a cover on, placing bare feet on the cold floor.

 _Seven months_ , he counts as he walks out of the bedroom. Seven months since his heart turned into cold, grey concrete and his fist drove itself into the wall four times, his knuckles cracked in three different places, his mind split into pieces of which most of it drove away to California and the sun. He did everything in that moment that she hated. Everything he hated in himself came out the moment she left. Maybe it was better that way. Maybe he’s supposed to be better this way, use this time as a coping mechanism but he knows in himself, he’s not coping with anything.

Seven months since he had heard her voice, but he sniggers again.

It may have been seven months, but her voice in his mind is still as clear as it had been seven months ago.

He thinks of the specifics, he likes to remember the exact moment in which his life fell apart.

 _“I just can’t do this anymore,”_ she had said as she left him standing on the steps of the trailer.

Jughead smiles to himself as he searches for his menthols. “Yeah,” he agrees out loud. “I can’t either.”

Sometimes the coffee isn’t strong enough when he feels this way.

* * *

Sweet Pea slams his fist on the table in front of Jughead and Jughead hides a flinch. Sweet Pea was always loud, bold movements and scare tactics that makes Jughead roll his eyes and turn away from the sole person he could probably trust these days. It makes him feel somewhat sick and a whole lot of pathetic. Jughead shoves thoughts of his oldest friend to the back of his mind, he makes a mental note that he should probably call Archie, but what would he have to say when Archie was making a name for himself and all Jughead has is the tainted name of Southside on his shoulders.

“I don’t want to get all deep on you -” Sweet Pea starts.

“Then don’t.”

Sweet Pea groans and throws a punch at Jughead’s shoulder. “I’m not supposed to be running this shit, it’s supposed to be _you_ ,” Sweet Pea says seriously. “Or I’ll have to get Toni on your ass and you know how that goes…”

“Ah,” Jughead says with a wink. “Castration seems to be her flavour of choice these days…”

Sweet Pea shudders. “My balls will never be the same.”

Jughead sips at a cherry cola; Cheryl’s Special. “I’m good,” he shrugs but the look on Sweet Pea’s face tells him loud and clear that his lies aren’t well received. “Honestly.”

“Well,” Sweet Pea replies, stealing Jughead’s same cherry cola. “Honesty is the best policy and all of that dumb shit.”

“I thought we weren’t getting deep…”

Sweet Pea grins, showing all of his teeth. “Need my main man back -”

“Not sure how Fangs is going to feel knowing you just shoved him to bottom of the pecking order.”

“You got your snark back, I like that,” Sweet Pea chuckles. “So, you’re going to stop being all emo and come back to us?”

Jughead thinks it over, he looks at the smoky room, the smell of spilt beer and joints so ingrained in the walls,he wonders just how many secrets would spill if these walls could talk. “Maybe,” he shrugs.

Sweet Pea carries on, words pouring out onto the table in front of them, hands flying, some shit fight story about how much Cheryl pisses him off and how Toni almost beat him into a pulp. At some point, Cheryl catches Jughead’s eye and bites her matching cherry red lip that sends a jolt through Jughead’s spine and pools saliva on his tongue.

 _Ain’t nothing better than regrets and the opportunity to forget,_ he thinks. He can smell her skin on him already...

Sweet Pea stops and the pause in his non-stop verbal offload catches Jughead’s attention; clicking heels seem like booming clunks when the noise is so familiar to Jughead. “Juggie!” says Veronica. “Come back to the pit to play, huh?”

Veronica’s lips are dark and moving in slow motion as Jughead reaches for his menthols. He gives her a curt nod and a lopsided attempt at a smile as he flicks the lighter and watches the burning red at the tip of his cigarette, he inhales deeply while he watches mauve nails dance up Sweet Pea’s arm. “Ronnie.”

She gives him a smile that has him spiralling. _Familiar_ , he thinks. He hates everything that’s familiar because it remind him of _her_.

Sweet Pea continues on his long winded spiels but Jughead watches Veronica tap rhythmically on the table in front of them. It was something that she had done since they were fifteen yet twenty five proves that mostly, they are still the same.

 _Well_ , he thinks, _some of us_.

Some people change, some don’t. Some people are all for personal growth and some people can’t even see the beginning of change.

“Don’t you keep being a stranger,” Sweet Pea orders. “We miss you around here and we need you too.”

Jughead’s automatic answers seem to convince Sweet Pea and so he lets Jughead go.

Cheryl locks eyes with Jughead and he can taste the venom pooling in the back of his throat already.

He walks outside, swinging the keys to his bike around his finger but hears the door of the Whyte Wyrm slam behind him. “Hey, you!” Veronica calls out.

Jughead groans loudly and turns to look at her. “Princess,” he drawls.

Her scowl makes him smile but she runs up to him anyway. “You’re quiet today,” she says, looking up at him and asking a million questions with her stare. “But you came out of your snake pit, nice to know.”

“You’re full of these snake puns? Learning a lot with Sweet Pea, huh?”

She doesn’t like it, she slaps a hand on Jughead’s chest and gives him a shove that doesn’t move him. “I miss you,” she murmurs.

Jughead feels a lump in his throat. How was he supposed to explain to Veronica that she reminds him too much of his best friend who’s not around for him anymore or Betty who left without a second thought. Or the fact that before she decided to dedicate her life to Sweet Pea, he had unloaded his entire life onto her one night and then fucked her on the floor of the trailer and though she’s brushed it off as nothing but some sort of weird way of comforting each other, to him, it was a whole lot more than that. “Yeah,” he snickers. “Like a bullet to the brain.”

“Give yourself a little more credit, Juggie,” she says with a wink. “Don’t be a stranger, Sweet Pea was right… or at least, don’t be a stranger to me.”

Jughead pats her on the back and starts up the bike. The one person he wants to be a stranger to right now would be her. But she’s the one thing he has left from before he felt like this.

 _Lost_.

* * *

The thing that Jughead loves about Cheryl is that she’s smooth and also, she doesn’t want anything from him.

She tastes like cherry cola and her lipstick is sweeter than anything he’s tasted before. When her lips dance on his skin, he feels invincible. “Are you going to keep staring at me? Or are you going to do something about this?” she asks, rubbing her hand on his hardened crotch.

He knows she likes the way his hand sounds against her ass, so he slaps it, over and over and jiggles it a bit, making her smile against his collarbone, that in itself makes him grip harder and need her a little more than before.

He makes a noise that makes his cheeks flush and it makes her snigger with a look in her eye that proves that she’s just as desperate as he is. He has no shame about it; Cheryl has an ass that makes him want to leave marks on it.

She undoes his belt buckle quickly and her lips fall open a little that gives off the air of hunger. She pulls down his jeans while he’s still standing and runs her teeth over his dick with his boxers still on. He bucks a against her mouth without intention.

Jughead loves the fact that Cheryl wears a shit load of lace. The red lace that runs between her thighs and the bralette that frames her tits so well looks good when Cheryl is on her knees. But Jughead now has a hunger of his own and memories that need drowning so he pulls down his boxers himself with an urgency that makes Cheryl grin against Jughead’s thigh. He pulls himself out. Cheryl takes him all in.

The thing with Cheryl is that she doesn’t like kissing. Jughead’s mouth is all over her body but she turns away from most kisses that makes him both frustrated and slam into her harder. His mouth is all over her shoulders as he slips into her from the back and her long, red hair looks so good wrapped around his fist….

He holds onto both of her ass cheeks as he cums, shaking, nails digging into her and his head thrown back so hard, he’s almost blinded and just about lost every trace of his bad thoughts in her. She keeps grinding back on him to the point where he has to push away from her. “Thank you, baby,” she murmurs as she lays with lace around her ankles and a ripped bra on that she starts ripping all the way off. He watches her fingers as they dance across her chest and it’s enough to make him want to go again, but at the same time, he likes laying in almost-forgotten bliss and ignorance with Cheryl Blossom in his arms and the poisonous, strawberry scent of her hair burning in his nose.

“How long can I stay for?” he asks.

Cheryl’s look of shock amuses him. “How long are you planning on staying?” she asks. “I don’t want people knowing you’re here.”

“I don’t want people to know I’m here, don’t worry,” he chuckles.

She flutters fingers along his abdomen. “Then what the hell are you asking me, Jones?”

He sighs. If only he could tell her that he just doesn’t want to go home. “Nothing,” he says, ghosting his own fingers on her skin.

Maybe he’d hit up Toni. Maybe it’s a movie and burgers kind of night instead. He feels proud of himself, he’s managed to shove memories to the back. Even if only for one day.

Cheryl’s body feels so good when he’s trying to forget. The worst part was that it was so obvious in the way that Cheryl plays with his hair and runs her lips on his chest that she was trying to forget something too… Jughead was used to the feeling, but he wouldn’t wish it upon anyone. So he pulls her closer, runs his fingers in the band of her panties and lets her talk with cherry cola in her mouth. He appreciates her more than he’d ever be able to tell her.

" _I miss you_ ," from Veronica echoes through his head as Cheryl distracts him. He misses himself. He misses Veronica. " _I miss you,"_ she repeats in his mind. They both just miss what could have been and what isn't anymore. 

* * *

Veronica stands in front of him as he lays on the bed. “Get up,” orders. “Sweet Pea wants you… god you make me sick, when was the last time you slept in a made bed?” she asks, pulling at the blanket. “The last time I came and made it for you? 

Jughead ignores the order. Veronica Lodge standing in his filthy trailer in Louboutins wasn’t something he was accustomed to but he was going to enjoy it while it lasted. The shoes alone would probably cost more than everything in the trailer, of that, he was sure.

Jughead’s mind was a smoke induced high, wispy and scattered. But she was very much real, in his zone, in his space and it made him feel level for the first time in a long time. Her eyes flick from Jughead in his boxers to the ashtray on the bedside table that she was obviously disgusted by and that gave him some satisfaction. “I’ll be there when I’m ready,” he tells her.

Veronica scoffs and reaches down to the bed, grabbing at his ankle and tugging. “I’ve been sent as an order and now, I am ordering you to get your lazy ass out of bed and come with me.”

Jughead rubs his eyes and tries to wish her out of the trailer but he rolls over anyway and gets out of the bed, stretching out his limbs, still wishing her away, “Tell Sweet Pea I’m busy.”

“As if he’d believe that,” she starts. “I want you to come too.”

“Why?”

“I miss your company,” Veronica shrugs.

Jughead rolls his eyes. “You miss it in theory, but only when associated with Archie.”

“We’ve had good times without Archie,” she says slowly.

Jughead can’t think about that. Or the way she made him feel. _This is what happens when I’m weak_ , he thinks. _When I have no self control._

_When I’m so lonely, I’d try anything._

He walks past Veronica who just continues to click after him as he goes into the kitchen, flicking on the jug for a strong coffee. “Coffee?” he asks.

“Fuck the formalities, Jughead…” she replies sighing. “You can’t just keep living in this trailer, for starters, it’s messy -”

“An _organised_ mess -”

“Don’t lie,” she says in a breath. “And it’s not good for you…” she says a little more quietly.

Jughead’s jaw tenses and can barely manage a swallow. He closes his eyes for only a split second before saying; “What’s not good for me?”

“Trust me,” Veronica says, trying to meet his eyes but he avoids them only after noticing the serious look in them. “At some point, everyone must move on.”

He turns on the balls of his feet and leans back on the kitchen counter. The jug had stopped boiling already and the steam rises and gives Jughead something to concentrate on. “I’m trying.”

“Betty left you, Jughead,” Veronica says with a face that shows nothing. _Nothing_ . Nothing but the deep purple on her lips is apparent. Jughead wonders where her soul is; it isn’t there, not in the way she spits out Betty’s name as though it’s nothing, or lays the truth out in front of them both. _She left me_ , he thinks. _She’s not coming back._

He stands in front of Veronica. Bare chested, exposed, and a hell of a lot of vulnerable. He hates it. He wonders if he hates Veronica. But he knows he doesn’t, she laid out the truth. The same one she was so obviously capable of accepting. “You don’t know how it feels, Princess,” he spits, “To lose things. Veronica Lodge always gets what she wants, right?” he tries to dull down the malice in his words.

He wants to hurt her for hurting him.

Veronica rolls her eyes and shrugs off her jacket, the one she was so lovingly offered by Sweet Pea. “I don’t know what it’s like to lose things?”

Jughead can feel the heat building in his cheeks, and the all too familiar twitch in his fists. “I-”

“Don’t you want to know how I felt when Archie left me? Or do you think you’re the only person on earth who’s loved someone just to have them walk out? Because if you do, sweetie, you have another thing coming.”

“Veronica -”

“No!” she snaps, cutting him off. He jerks back a step with her words. “Feels like your world is falling down around you, right?” she says, walking closer to Jughead. He can smell shifting jasmine and leather approaching him, the way her eyes widen make her seem a whole lot more fiery and less of her sweet-kind-of-coy that she wears often. “High School Sweethearts seems pathetic, doesn’t it? When you’re sixteen and can’t see past the bad end of twenty. How can someone who promised you love just leave, right?”

Jughead feels his words sitting on the back of his tongue. He hates that she has a point, but how can he hate her when she’s put it into words. She took them out of his mouth, she’s thrown them right back at him. “Right,” he announces.

“Right?” she says with a laugh that hurts him in every way possible. “I’m always right.”

Jughead puts on an amused smile and tries to get rid of the stinging in his eyes. But he sees past his own building tears to the ones that are in Veronica’s eyes, bursting, streaming and smudging perfectly placed mascara. “Ronnie,” he says, weakly lifting his right arm that doesn’t seem to want to move. “Are you okay?” he asks.

She sniffs loudly as Jughead places a hand on her shoulder. “I always have to be okay, Jughead. But he left me too, you know? And how the hell could he have done that to me?”

“What about Sweet Pea?” Jughead says, searching for words, scrambling at anything that he could say to stop this. But Veronica leans into his touch and places her forehead on his chest.

 _What about Sweet Pea?_ He asks himself. _She’s moved on, right?_

He awkwardly places his chin on Veronica’s head, holding her close. This felt a lot safer than he initially thought it would. It was like he was holding onto something that was slightly more home than he was used to. The smell was not as strong as he thought it would be, it didn’t sting his nostrils and make him move away like Cheryl did. She felt like that familiarity that he had been longing for. Maybe it was some weird connection to Archie, he missed his best friend. Maybe it was the memory of Veronica and Betty sharing shakes and laughing in the middle of summer that drew him closer. He pulls on Veronica’s jacket, bringing her in close and he can feel the warmth of her breath on his chest as she sobs. He lets her shudder. Lets her tears seep on to his chest, run down him. He holds on. He needs this too.

He needs to feel something again.

Veronica’s nails drag on his skin a little as she cries. Jughead knows that she hasn’t been able to do this, let loose, cry; get it out. Be herself. He knows it in his heart, in his soul, in the back of his mind. He knows because he hasn’t been able to either. “Sometimes it’s just so fucked up how he said he loved me and then all of a sudden he couldn’t do this anymore…” she whispers. “Archie wasn’t supposed to be like that, you know that, Jug. You know him better than anyone.”

Jughead closes his eyes as he lets Veronica’s words linger in the air a little longer. “Maybe you and I are just a little too dark, Ronnie,” Jughead adds. “We’re the kind that are a little too hard to love…”

She laughs against him and he laughs back, pushing her away a little to look at her. He lifts his hands and rubs black from her bottom eyelids. He feels it; the way she’s exposed, the way her cheeks instantly harden as he touched her face. She doesn’t spill tears. He can tell. Because he face is hard and her back is straight again. “We’re fucked up, is that what you’re trying to say?” she says with a small smile.

Jughead frowns, standing in front of her. “Kind of,” he murmurs. “You don’t have to act in front of me though,” he tells her seriously. “We’ve known each other almost ten years, Ronnie. If you want to cry, cry.”

She shakes her head, is barely noticable, but it’s there. “How is the man who’s going through a mental break down telling me I’m allowed to cry?”

“Well, we all have souls and that, right?”

Veronica’s face falters. “Souls? I don’t think so,” she mutters. “If we were just a little bit more good, if we were just a little less broken, if we were a little easier to love, they wouldn’t have left us.”

Jughead mulls over her words, so many points, so much hurt. She’s small in front of him when she speaks in such volumes that her words grind on his skin. “But the good like to fix things, isn’t that their biggest quality?”

Veronica smiles gently before placing a hand on his chest, giving him a pat and turning around. “You need a soul to fix. No use if we have no soul…”

Jughead stands in the kitchen as Veronica opens the trailer door and steps out. “Hey!” he calls out before thinking, cursing himself internally. “Maybe we just need someone to save our souls…”

Veronica throws a hand in the air as she starts down the steps. “We’ll get there, Jughead.

Jughead watches her as she walks along the dirt, lingering jasmine still in the air. “Wait for me! 

She stops, confusion etched on her face. “For what?”

“I’m coming!” he reaches for a pair of jeans and flannel on the kitchen table before throwing Southside on his shoulders. His  thoughts were racing, but if he has to cling on tightly to the one person he might have left, he was going to do it.

Veronica throws her car keys in the air before catching them. “You’re coming? What happened to brooding in your damp trailer?” she teases.

Jughead lightly shoves her shoulder before putting a joint between his lips. “Save our souls…” he shrugs. “Maybe you’ve talked a bit of healing into me, Princess,” he says with a wink.

“Well then, Prince of Southside, what shall we do?” she asks. “Where should we go?”

He jumps in the passengers side of Veronica’s car. “Anywhere,” he says quickly. “Anywhere with you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Shall I continue? Who the fuck knows.


End file.
